I loved everything about this man, not just each piece but how they all fit to make the whole of him. I’d bound my life with his and never regretted it. So why, then, did I fear so much sharing one more piece of myself?
I wanted him inside me harder, faster, deeper. I leaned forward to kiss him and he pumped upward. I no longer needed the help of his hand. My clit rubbed his belly as he thrust, and I cried out into his mouth as I started to come. My cunt clenched on his erection and he grunted. His hands gripped my sides, sliding on my sweat-slick skin. I tasted salt on his mouth.
I wanted to close my eyes when I came, but I kept them open so I could see his face. His mouth tightened. He thrust so hard he moved my entire body. He blinked, his gaze going far away, and knowing he was so close sent another thrill of climax jittering through me.
“Elle,” Dan panted. “Is it okay?”
“It’s great, baby,” I murmured. Sex makes even the silliest sentences all right.
He shook his head a little, still thrusting. “No, baby. Is it okay?”
He hadn’t meant my orgasm. He’d meant his. I hadn’t made him use a condom, and I still had the antibiotics in my system. I loved him a hundred times more for his concern.
“It’s absolutely okay.”
It was like I gave him permission, because that’s when his body tensed and he let out a long, low groan. His cock throbbed inside me and he thrust upward once more before clutching me to him and kissing my mouth.
I couldn’t feel him spurt inside me, but I imagined I did. In my head the army of small, swimming sperm surged upward through the welcoming territory of my womb, seeking their target. Would one find its goal tonight?
Had we made a child?
And if we had, would it really be all right?
* * *
Nobody in their right mind would have ever asked me to help plan a baby shower, but Marcy’s sister Linda didn’t know me. Or maybe she wasn’t in her right mind. At any rate, as Marcy’s self-proclaimed best friend, I’d been strongly encouraged to help her sister with organizing this party.
It was supposed to be a surprise, but getting Marcy out of the house and to the restaurant where dozens of her friends and family waited was harder than I’d expected.
“I’m a whale,” she complained from her place on the couch. “A frigging whale, Elle. I’m not going out of the house like this. I can’t buy shoes. My feet are way too swollen.”
“It’s BOGO at Neiman Marcus.” I had no shame. I also had fifty people and a buffet lunch waiting for us. “C’mon. Get your lazy ass off that couch.”
“I’m not lazy,” Marcy said reprovingly. “I’m knocked up.”
“Shoes,” I said sternly.
“Fine. Bitch,” she said and held out her hand. “Help me up.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to run away. I most definitely did not want to be the woman sprawled on the couch with a belly so big she wouldn’t be able to see the shoes I was supposedly bullying her into buying. I tugged her to her feet. In the car I had to help her buckle her seat belt and we both laughed until I felt sick to my stomach.
I also didn’t want to be the woman weeping at the sight of her friends shouting, “surprise.” Marcy’s tears didn’t seem to embarrass her, but little did. I, however, would’ve been mortified to break down like that in public. It would have been like wetting my pants, or throwing up on myself. I never wanted to be that woman with such a precarious hold on her emotions. Not ever.
“You’re quiet.” Marcy, plate laden with cake and pasta salad, wore a hat festooned with ribbons and bows from the packages she’d spent forty minutes unwrapping. “Everything okay?”
“Absolutely.” I smiled. “You made out like a bandit.”
“I love you,” Marcy said suddenly. Tears welled in her eyes again.
I’ve never been a hugger, but there wasn’t any graceful way to avoid her embrace. “Oh, Marce. Hush.”
“This was the b-b-best...” She sniffled and then dug into her cake. “You’re the best friend ever!”
“I just helped, that’s all.”
“Thank you,” Marcy said. “I mean it, Elle. I’m so...thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I told her, because there wasn’t much else to say.
Marcy was pulled away by some other friends who wanted to take her picture, and I was left alone for a moment to look around at the heaps of baby items she’d received. Diapers, wipes, blankets, tiny little outfits in pale colors and decorated with ducks and bunnies.... Only a few months ago she and I had gone shopping for sexy lingerie, and now her entire life had changed. Her entire focus had turned toward the stranger in her belly.
She didn’t notice when I slipped out.
I drove for a while before going home, just trying to clear my head. When I pulled into my driveway and saw a familiar car parked in front of my house, I wished I’d driven a lot longer.
My mother rarely visited us, but when she did she never called first. I think she knew if I had warning I’d probably make excuses about why she couldn’t come over. Since my father’s death, her life had changed a lot and so had our relationship, but it would never be the sort to write about on a greeting card.
* * *
My mother might not view me as the perfect daughter, but she loved Dan. This brought me no end of amusement and surprise, because she’d been set on hating him at the start. I never knew what changed her mind, aside from the fact I didn’t see how anyone could not love Dan. Still, my mother wasn’t known for loving anyone, and every time I saw her smile at him I couldn’t help wondering when she was going to sink the knife in his gut.
Dan, on the other hand, had no doubts about his ability to charm my mother. I watched them through the kitchen door before I went in. He poured her coffee and offered her the creamer. He was talking about something, his hands waving, and she watched him, nodding. I might have been jealous if I really wanted her to like me as much as she liked him, but thankfully I’d managed to get past yearning for that.
“...rip out the floor and put in hardwood.”
Ah. He was telling her about his grand plans to renovate the house. Dan talked a lot about what he wanted to do. I talked a lot about how much it would cost. We usually found a compromise.
“Elle.” My mother looked up from her coffee. “You’re home.”
I bit my tongue on the sarcastic “duh” that wanted to come out. “Hi, Mom.”
Dan came to kiss and hug me. “How was the shower?”
“Fine.” I wanted some coffee and helped myself.
“Shower? What shower?”
“My friend Marcy is having a baby,” I said.
“How lucky for her mother,” my mother said. “She must be thrilled to become a grandmother.”
Dead silence filled the kitchen. I glanced at Dan, but he was getting ready to flee. My husband is a smart man.
“Mom,” I said mildly, turning with my cup in my hand. “You’re a grandma, too.”
“I’ve got some...stuff...to do...in the place....” Dan said, and exited the kitchen before my mother could reply.
“I need a cigarette,” my mother said. “Come outside with me.”
I’d learned to pick my battles. I went outside. My mother lit up at once, smoking and looking out over our small backyard. I waited for her to talk.
“He sent me a picture of her.”
“Her name is Leah, Mom. She’s adorable.”
My mother glanced at me sideways and blew twin streams of smoke from her nose. “I know you think I’m being awful. But I just can’t, Ella. I just...”
“Oh, why not?” I asked, weary of her drama. “Because she’s black? Because he’s gay? What the hell is your problem, Mother, really?”
“Because I’m not sure how to be a grandmother!” she cried in a thin, high voice nothing like her usual one. Her hand shook as she stabbed out her cigarette and lit another.
I couldn’t speak at first, not until I’d swallowed some coffee. “I thoug
ht you wanted to be a grandma. God knows you keep dropping hints about it.”
“It would be different with you.”
“How would it be different?” I demanded.
My mother looked at me. “You are my daughter. It’s different with a mother and a daughter, that’s all.”
I hardly thought our relationship qualified, but I didn’t say that. Sometimes the things we most want to say are the ones that should never be said. “She’s just a little girl, Mom. All you have to do is...all you have to do is love her.”
I was horrified at the way my throat closed on those words and at the burning of tears in my eyes. “Just love her.”
We stared at each other for what felt like a very long time while my mother’s cigarette burned to ash in her fingers, unsmoked.
“I don’t know if I can.” Her words came out low and soft and naked. “I just don’t know if I can.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure she could, either.
“You should try.”
How had the tables turned? How had I become the one who knew what should be done and how to do it? How had my mother become the child needing to be taught?
“Maybe we could...go see them together,” she said after another long, long minute. “Would you go with me?”
She had asked, not demanded. I couldn’t remember if she’d ever asked me to do anything in my entire life. And though we never touched, I reached for my mother’s hand.
“Yes,” I told her. “I’ll go with you.”
* * *
My period had come and gone. I stared at the plastic compact in my hand. Today I was supposed to take the first of this month’s pills. I hadn’t decided if I was going to.
“Elle, are you coming?”
“Just a minute.” I punched the pill from the foil but didn’t swallow it.
I’d just finished my nightly shower and as usual the mirror had steamed over. My hair hung in wet tendrils on my cheeks. The towel I’d tucked around my chest hit me only at midthigh and wasn’t much in favor of staying on. When Dan poked his head into the bathroom and I turned to face him, it fell down.
“Nice view.” He grinned.
I grabbed it with the hand not clutching the pill. “Ha ha.”
He came in, naked and unconcerned with his nudity. He reached for the towel and yanked it with a grin. We tussled over it. I didn’t fight too hard. I was naked in a minute.
Dan put his hand between my legs as he looked into my eyes. “Hello.”
“You,” I said, “are a perv.”
His brows raised. “Why? Because all I can think about right now is eating that sweet pussy until you scream?”
His dirty talk made me giggle even though it turned me on, too. “I hear you talking, but I don’t see you on your knees.”
He dropped at once, so fast I let out a startled cry. He kissed me, hot breath stealing over my flesh and parting my legs. I took a step back until my rear hit the countertop.
“Is this better?” he murmured against my flesh.
Whatever witty comment I’d planned got lost as his tongue came out to taste me. I put a hand on his head, my fingers threading through his hair. It had grown long, needed a cutting, but it was perfect for grabbing.
He opened my thighs with his hands and found my clit with his lips and tongue. I could see his cock in his fist if I tilted my head just right, but I found it hard to concentrate on anything but the pleasure sweeping through me. I settled for putting my other hand on his shoulder and letting the smooth rise and fall tell me how fast and hard he was stroking.
My head tipped back as I lost myself in the sensation of his hot, wet mouth on my hot, wet cunt. When he added a finger, then two, inside me, I cried out. It sometimes took me too long to come this way, and sometimes I didn’t like it at all, but not tonight. Tonight it was all I could do not to ride his face and hand...well, I’ll admit it. I did.
His soft moans and the steady, slick sound of his cock pumping in his fist encouraged me. He licked me and I rocked my hips to press my clit closer on his tongue.
I was going to come. He was going to come. Best of all, there was absolutely, positively no way I was going to get pregnant this way.
He got there before I did. He let out that certain groan-moan-sigh I knew so well. I smelled him, that familiar scent. My orgasm ripped through me and the world spun. I took a breath, then another, gasping.
When I opened my eyes, Dan was looking up at me with a cat-got-the-cream grin. He got to his feet and kissed me. I put my arms around him, hugging him tight.
“I love you,” he said and kissed my mouth again before turning on the shower. I heard him whistling, jaunty, when he got under the spray, and I envied him the nature that made everything so swiftly eased.
I turned to the mirror again and saw my face, flushed, before the steam once again covered the glass. I’d had my fingers closed tight and the sting in my palm made me open my hand. The pill still lay within, half-dissolved, and I stared at it before I brought my hand to my mouth and licked it clean.
* * *
When my father was alive, my mother had thrown a gala Christmas party every year. We children had been banished upstairs while the grown-ups ate and drank and smoked and played cards. It was a party for adults, never us. I remembered peeking through the banister to watch my mother, dressed as always in a perfectly matching outfit, her hair and makeup immaculate. The perfect hostess. I had grown up thinking that was what a woman should be. What a mother should be.
I wasn’t anything like my mother.
This party, too, was nothing like the parties my mother had organized with such precision. As Dan pulled into my brother’s driveway, a cluster of children in party hats stampeded around the house. My mother let out a distinctive, sniffing sigh. Whatever caustic comment had risen to her lips stayed locked behind them, though. She said nothing as she got out of the car and stood, staring at the house.
My former neighbor Mrs. Pease had given me the heavy crockery bowl on my lap before she moved in with her son, but though she’d tried to teach me her best recipes, Dan had been the one to fill it with his Macaroni Salad à la Dan. He took the bowl so I could get out of the car, too, and he stole a kiss while he was at it.
“Relax,” he murmured in my ear. “It will be fine.”
From the backyard came the noise of chatter and music. I smelled burgers grilling, and my stomach rumbled. My mother clutched a small tray of cookies with both hands. She’d baked them herself, but if I knew my mother it had been out of a sense of social propriety rather than any sort of ooey-gooey, fuzzy feelings. She’d no more have shown up at a party empty-handed than she would have spit on the sidewalk. Yet now she clutched that tray so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Mom?”
She turned to look at me. Her lips had pressed into the thin, grim line I’d seen so often. “Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
I wanted to shake her then, I really did. Dan’s touch on my arm turned me toward him. His smile made me forget I had an evil side.
Dan looked at her. “Let’s go around back, okay?”
She nodded just once and moved forward with a series of jerky steps unlike her usual graceful ones. He shot me a glance over his shoulder as I followed. Dan touched my mother’s shoulder gently.
“Why don’t you let me take the tray?”
I thought she’d say no, but after a second she nodded. “Yes. I think...Ella, would you show me the restroom, please. I think I’d like to freshen up.”
Another look from Dan stayed my retort. “Sure. We’ll go in the front.”
Again, she nodded. Dan took the cookies and headed around the back while I took my mother through the front door and into the kitchen, where I dropped off the bowl of macaroni salad and showed her the powder room.
My brother’s house was newer than mine, and in a suburban neighborhood rather than in the heart of Harrisburg. The previous owner had been a big fan of country decor. The apple-and-r
ooster border on the walls of the kitchen and attached den didn’t quite match the modern leather and wood furniture Chad and Luke had brought from California. Toys had been tossed into a series of brightly colored plastic bins along the far wall, and those didn’t match, either.
Through the sliding glass doors I could see the deck where my brother’s partner reigned in his chef’s hat and apron over the grill. Dan was shaking Chad’s hand and taking a beer. A few women mingled, but mostly men chased after the hordes of children swarming the jungle gym and trampoline and wreaking havoc on the grass.
“Ella, my God,” my mother said as she came out of the bathroom. She’d refreshed her lipstick and powder and brushed her hair. I even caught the fresh scent of perfume. Any earlier hesitation had vanished beneath the cosmetics she wore as a shield. “Did you know there are...kittens...in that bathroom?”
She said it as though they’d decorated the bathroom with photographs of severed limbs. I’d seen that bathroom. Severed limbs would have been less disturbing. “Yes.”
“Kittens in a washtub!” Clearly, she was appalled.
“It came with the house, Mom.”
“Well,” she said with a familiar sniff, “I know your brother has better taste than that.”
The sliding glass door opened and Chad stepped through, blinking as he came from bright into dim. “Hey.”
Her chin lifted a bit. “Chad.”
Their embrace was so stiff I felt awkward just watching it. The hug he gave me was much more natural. I felt my mother watching us, but when I looked at her I couldn’t tell what she was thinking about the fact her children were more comfortable with each other than either of us was with her. Maybe she wasn’t thinking anything. Maybe I was the one who always thought too much.
The door slid open again, letting in the smell of grilling meat and the cries of children. Luke came in bearing a platter of burgers that he set on the counter. Dan followed on his heels, Leah a squirming bundle in his arms.
“Mrs. Kavanagh.” Luke, who stood over six feet tall and had arms the size of my thighs, made no move to hug her. “Glad you could come.”
The kitchen was suddenly much smaller than it had been five minutes before as we all eyed each other. Dan put Leah down and took a second to straighten her frilly white dress. She wore lacy socks, too, and white patent-leather shoes. Her daddies thought she was their princess and had dressed her as one.